PENGUIN GROUP USA INC.

This definitive book on games offers rules, strategies and odds for more than 250 games.Third Revised Edition. Glossary 362 Pgs. 2001

This great classic subtitled "A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty One" has sold a over one million copies since the 1960's when it was originally published. Thorp is considered the Father of Modern Blackjack Play. His theories helped develop a count system that revolutionized the way players and casinos look at the game. An absolute must-have for anyone who intends to play blackjack. All current forms of beating blackjack stem from this single work. Includes perforated cards and is a new...

There are trivia books and there are unusual trivia books. This is one of the latter, though it covers a not-so-unusual topic. According to the back cover, this is for the major league couch potato, the life-long season ticket holder or the person teaching the game to a beginner. According to popular readership, it's one of the best and most interesting books about pitching, hitting, running, fielding, and other activities on the baseball field. It handles practical information and unique...

Subtitled 'The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Vegas Poker'. Blood Aces tells the astonishing story of Benny Binion—a rip-roaring saga of murder, money and the making of Las Vegas. Benny Binion was many things: A cowboy, a pioneering casino owner, a gangster, a killer, and founder of the hugely successful World Series of Poker. Blood Aces is the tale of Binion’s crucial role in shaping modern Las Vegas. From a Texas backwater, Binion rose to prominence on a...

For many performers, stage life and real life are separate identities. For master illusionist Harry Houdini, the two were inextricably linked. In this widely acclaimed biography, Ruth Brandon shows how Houdini’s obsession with his own mortality drove him to create death-defying stunts that not only captivated the public but also subdued his own raging psychological demons. As Brandon relates Houdini’s methods of escape, she asks: What was he trying to escape from? Her exploration of the...

Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile, and The Bed of Procrustes. Now in a striking new hardcover edition, Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas...

Subtitled "From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market". The incredible true story of the card-counting mathematics professor who taught the world how to beat the dealer and, as the first of the great quantitative investors, ushered in a revolution on Wall Street. A child of the Great Depression, legendary mathematician Edward O. Thorp invented card counting, proving the seemingly impossible: That you could beat the dealer at the blackjack table. As a result he launched...

Bill Simmons, the wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining basketball addict known to millions as ESPN’s The Sports Guy, has written the definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA. From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for all—every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating...

There are really two games, the one you see and the one you don't. The way I see it, the best way to use access to both worlds is to illuminate and reveal, not idolize and adore. It's better to be wrong than to be played for a fool. – Colin CowherdIn this age of billion-dollar athletic marketing campaigns, “feel good” philosophy with no connection to reality, and a Sports Media echo chamber that’s all too eager swallow whatever idiotic notion happens to be in vogue at the moment, it’s tough to...

Subtitled 'The Outrageous, Uplifting, and Heartbreaking World of Fantasy Sports from the Guy Who's Lived It' Fantasy football, fantasy baseball, fantasy basketball, even fantasy sumo wrestling: The world of fantasy sports is huge, and still growing. Today, more than 35 million people in the United States and Canada spend hours upon hours each week on their fantasy sports teams. And as the Senior Fantasy Sports Analyst for ESPN, Matthew Berry is on the front lines of what has grown from a niche...